McAllister's Mates Thirty Eight
Hi all
Another McAllister’s Mates where I tell you about one of the many great writers on Substack that I have stumbled upon and become enthralled by. I’ve featured Derek James Kritzberg before… but here’s the thing - I’ve been lying. Oh I gave the usual story about following a link to another link and stumbling upon his profile, but the truth of our first meeting is much darker and stranger than that, perhaps now dear reader you are ready for that truth…
The carnival was in full swing, jubilant cries mingling with wails of “My money! My money!”, the rich scents of candy and cheap liquor interspersed with the reek of stale vomit. A perfect drama of choice and consequence, cause and effect. The huge silver and diamanté sign above the entryway read JOY. A slight notch in the O created the impression of an Ouroboros-the serpent eating its own tail, a symbol of power and passivity in eternal conflict and, conversely, balance. An irony no doubt lost on most of the revellers present, but highly relevant to my business there.
A small hut lay just outside the bustle of the main attractions, the silence cold yet soothing after the sensory assault of the carnival. A dim neon sign read DEALER READS. As I approached, most of the letters blew out in a blaze of electric sparks, leaving only a few still lit. The sign now read DREAD-hardly reassuring. I entered the hut, where a simple wooden table flanked by two hard little upright chairs took up the centre of the room. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with much more exotic fare-cybernetic limbs, impossibly complex circuit boards, and specimen jars with still-functioning organs floating in glowing, effervescent liquid: beating hearts, rising and falling lungs, and dilating eyeballs. The immediate impression was of a cutting-edge laboratory with tech hidden from the general public, yet the layers of dust and grime coating the artefacts could only have been built up over many long decades. It was said The Dealer lived outside conventional space and time.
I sat down on the small chair nearest the entrance. A small, previously unnoticed sculpture on the table caught my eye-a beautiful model of a silver angel, severely cut and angled in a cubist style, tapering to a point. At first glance, it resembled a small silver dagger. Instinctively, I reached out to touch it. I pulled my hand back in pain, blood blossoming from my fingertips-the figure was indeed razor sharp!
Maniacal laughter rose from the back of the room: “Angels, angels-dance and play, joke and laugh, CUT AND BURN! I know angels, boy.” The Dealer stood before me; if the artefacts hinted this being moved outside of time, then his appearance proved it beyond doubt. His costume shimmered in the room’s dim light, the materials flowing and morphing before my eyes. A plum linen tunic melted into a neon plastic shirt, a silver torc bracelet collapsed and reformed as an advanced medical monitor, and a gypsy earring crumbled to rebuild itself as a communications headset. His face was no less fascinating and bizarre-the blue eyes sparkling with ferocious intelligence and good humour while staring with an almost threatening intensity. His beard flickered between a thick golden bush and a few dots of electric particles hovering over his top lip. He settled into the other chair and rifled through a deck of strange, translucent blue-backed cards, each stamped with an angel motif just like the angel figurine my hand was still bleeding from contact with. The cards seemed more like electrical holograms than physical objects.
Every fibre of my being screamed a warning, yet I found myself unable to move. The hissing of the sliding cards rose to the roar of a storm-tossed ocean; a million voices mingled in the din-declarations of love, oaths of vengeance, and the sound of a thousand warriors roaring into battle. The voices blended to pronounce a single strange word: “Bellageist”. The blur of the moving cards became an all-consuming void, filled with planets where cities stretched and grew before my eyes, only to burn in the blazing fires of war. The vision faded and I was back in the room. The Dealer tossed a single card before me and turned it face up.
The Card of Judgement, the lie of society. “Look at it.” My head drooped of its own accord; I screwed my eyes shut, but invisible fingers plied them open. My vision swam again-a celebration, parades, banners, fear, betrayal, and a sickening chemical smell. The blurred vision unfolded into a singular story of the sweeping grandeur of Orwellian government complexes and the sheer visceral desperation of Dickens’ Victorian alleyways-Emancipation Day.
Judgement, the lie of society.
The Dealer’s small hut drifted back into vision. “Sharp, no?” he asked through a shark’s grin. Shaking and sweating, I tried to stand up but found I couldn’t rise from the chair. He threw down another card-The Magician, the lie of the ego. I rolled my head back. “LOOK!” His eyes blazed, his beard now a tangle of white-hot barbed wire. Again, the room blurred out of existence. Arrogance, regret, a prophecy, betrayal, the cold hands of a scientist, the hot muzzles of a thousand guns. The blurred vision unfolded into a singular story of a lost soul sacrificing his humanity on the whim of a quantum oracle. The folly and arrogance of imagined destiny, and the deadly compromises made to morality in the face of self-importance-By Angels Born.
The Magician, the lie of the ego
The Dealer waved the final card’s blue and silver angel motif in front of my eyes, then tossed it into the air; it landed face up. The Two of Blades, the lie of the self. A look of incredulity crossed his face. “That is a card even I fear to read.” I dropped my gaze deep into the card, too exhausted to resist. All the lives in all the worlds, the nowhere worlds of Sheol and the Bardo made real-a nothingness of everything! The blurred vision unfolded into a singular story. She was strength beyond a planet’s core, but trials and lies, trials and lies-what God, angel, or demon could endure? But somehow, there was love-Chains of a Demigod.
The Two of Blades, the lie of the self
I collapsed out of the chair onto the floor. The Dealer stepped over my body, grinning, and held yet another card-the translucent blue and silver angel perhaps a little paler than the others. “NO!” I screamed. Laughing, he turned it over. It was blank. “That one is yours to fill, boy. What stories shall you run or crawl back to me with? Go!”
I staggered out of the hut into the main carnival. The revellers drew back from me in fear, whispering and hurrying away. Considering that most were inebriated, my lack of coordination could hardly have been the cause of their alarm; clearly, there was something else. A dull itching started between my shoulders, growing to a steady ache, then to unbearable agony. I tore and scratched my skin. I looked at my hands; they were covered in tiny, silver, metallic hairs. No, not hairs-feathers…
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Incredible! I've never been much into tarot readings, but this made me VERY intrigued. You knocked it out of the park -- and how flattering!
Now I want to co-author something with you even more!